Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“Woah. Okay.” I cough to clear my voice of a need it shouldn’t have before trying again to announce that I have legs so the stranger doesn’t need to carry me like a husband ushering his bride into the honeymoon suite on their wedding night. “I can take it from here.” When he strays his eyes across the measly ten feet I trekked without his help, I gulp before pushing out, “But what kind of damsel in distress would I be if I didn’t let your feet get a little muddy?”
A helicopter’s rotator gobbles up any reply he’s planning to give. I’m not talking about one of those cute dome helicopters where the pilot and his passenger get chummy no matter their sexual preferences. I’m talking about a multiple-seat monstrosity with three blades and an engine powerful enough to whip up horse poo like it’s confetti.
While wiping away a chunk of gunk from my cheek, I grumble, “You can put me down now. I’m more than happy to die here. It will be nicer than any burial I could face if I turned up at a work function reeking of horse secretions.”
The stranger murmurs something under his breath as he continues skating across the no-longer-poo-riddled land, but he’s too quiet for me to hear. Perhaps it is in appreciation that the giant landmines have been swept away, even with half of them entangled within my hair.
I’ve always wanted to know what I’d look like as a brunette. Now I know. I could totally pull it off—if my stomach would stop churning in protest about the smell.
“Ahhh…” I drift my eyes to the promotional tent I was racing for when the stranger takes a left upon exiting the livestock lavatory instead of a right. “I took a shortcut through Dung Valley for that.” I point to the tent during the ‘that’ part of my comment. “I can’t be late. We have a very special guest arriving today… if he hasn’t already arrived.”
My eyes roll skyward when the stranger mutters, “He can wait.”
“You can say that because you look like you can afford to lose your 401K. I cannot.”
If he grips my butt cheeks any firmer, I may have to reconsider my belief that pain is a no-go zone for me. “You have nothing to worry about. He hasn’t even arrived yet.”
I wait for him to enter the door a man in a pristine black suit is holding open for him before asking, “How do you know that? Do you have x-ray vision?”
With nothing but glossy tiles under our feet, he could place me down, but he keeps my body plastered to his like he appreciates my curves while strolling through the race club’s suites as if he were the owner. “I was looking for him when I stumbled onto you. Why do you think I was in that area of the track in the middle of a race meet?”
“I thought you were as tardy as me, but clearly, that isn’t the case.”
His tone is as witty as mine when he mimics, “Clearly.”
I shoot my eyes around an elegantly decorated office when he barges through a cracked-open door without knocking. Considering the less desirable conditions outside, the inside of the race suites is far more elaborate. The big desk the stranger is striding toward has the latest Mac sitting at the side, a leather-stitched planner open to today’s date, and the window stretching from one wall to the next has a prime view of the finish line of the track.
Suites like this would be charged at a premium, but the stranger appears disinterested in the spectacle occurring outside. His strides don’t falter when he pushes a button on the wall to draw the blinds closed, then he continues for the desk.
“Are we allowed in here?” I ask, suddenly put off by the eerie quietness.
The stranger answers me by dragging his forearm not curled around the not-as-generous-as-I’d-like curves of my backside to clear the desk of its wireless keyboard, tablet, and writing instruments that look like they belong in the historical era.
Once they’re discarded on the floor along with the planner, my backside takes their place, and then he gets super handsy with me again.
I’m either too shocked about the sparks shooting through my body to respond to the gentle sweeps of his hands as he clears brown blobs from my skin or too horny to care. Since there are no butterflies fluttering in my stomach, I’d say it is most likely the latter. It’s been a while—and by a while, I mean not since Pete Reynolds won the talent show at a state fair five years ago.
My breathing shallows when Mr. Dark and Dangerous’s hands slide from my forearms to my thighs. The change-up isn’t solely to blame for the sudden influx of restlessness bombarding me. It is the fact no man will ever spark more interest from me than one willing to walk around with poop-scented hands just to make sure my skin is secretion free.